Exporters Attack Use of AFA in Indian Glycine AD Review
In a complaint brought to the Court of International Trade on May 30, exporters Kumar Industries and Bajaj Healthcare Limited pushed back against the Commerce Department’s review of the antidumping duty order on Indian-origin glycine. Kumar was hit with adverse facts available after the Commerce Department found it failed to adequately report affiliation with four other companies (Kumar Industries v. United States, CIT # 25-00081).
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The two exporters said one company, “Company A,” bought “a substantial portion of Kumar’s home market sales of glycine,” while another company, “Company B,” provided Kumar a large part of its inputs. Multiple Kumar partners also became partners in both Company A and Company B during the period of review, but Kumar handed over documentation demonstrating the extent of its affiliation with both during the review, they said.
Kumar had initially been affiliated with two other companies, “Company C” and “Company D,” but its partners divested from both prior to the original investigation into Indian-origin glycine following a “dispute,” they said.
“During the review, Commerce never requested that Kumar modify how it reported Company A’s resales of its purchases from Kumar, nor did it request that Kumar modify how it reported Company B’s input purchases,” they said. “Further, Commerce never requested that Kumar provide additional documentation related to Companies C and D to substantiate the lack of affiliation between the companies, nor did it request that Kumar revise its databases to reflect a perceived affiliation with Companies C and D.”
But Kumar was hit with an AFA rate of 57.17%, they said. As a result, Bajaj, a non-selected respondent, received a dumping margin of 28.59%, the average of Kumar’s rate and the other mandatory respondent’s zero percent rate.
Commerce’s finding that Kumar hadn’t adequately reported its affiliation with the four companies wasn’t true, the exporters said. Kumar reported its affiliation with Company A and Company B in its questionnaire responses, and it didn’t have to explain its affiliation with Company C or D -- it wasn’t actually affiliated with either, they said.
Further, they said, the departmen’t didn’t provide an adequate explanation as to why the information Kumar submitted was insufficient and meant the exporter hadn’t acted to the best of its ability. Even if Commerce was missing information, it should have applied neutral, not adverse, facts available, they claimed.